1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to providing web-based (internet or intranet) search results based upon a search query utilizing a search engine, where the search results are ranked based upon a relevance associated with computer-related activities of the user.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Social media networks facilitate the following of people and/or groups on internet or intranet web sites. Some examples of social media networks include, without limitation, internet websites such as Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn and Twitter. The Twitter website offers a social networking and blogging site that facilitates the sending and reading of messages by users referred to as “tweets”. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on a user's profile page. Tweets can be publicly available to users/subscribers of Twitter or, alternatively, restricted to a particular list of users (e.g., a friends list). Users may subscribe to other users' tweets, and this is known as following. The following users in Twitter are known as followers. Other social media networks also provide users with the capability to post messages or other information that is available to others, either publicly available or restricted to those granted access to a particular user's profile page.
Twitter permits a user to retweet (RT) relevant content to followers of the user. Users can also group posts together by topic or type by use of a hashtag statement. A hashtag is a word or phrase having the prefix “#” in the statement. The more often content in Twitter is retweeted or common hashtags are used provides an indication that such content is likely desired by followers of the accounts that are the senders or recipients of such retweets having hashtags of special interest.
Social networks such as Twitter also allow the user to generate lists of other users to follow as well as group lists of users to follow (or to not follow). In addition, search engines for such social media networks allow users to search for content desirable to a particular user (e.g., to find a friend or information on a particular subject that is of interest to the user).
With the ever increasing number of people utilizing such social networks and the large amount of content and information available for consumption, it is important to utilize a search engine that provides desirable and relevant information to the user. For example, a follower in Twitter may have a large group list that the user is following, which could result in a content amount that is too large or extensive to review. A search engine that can further categorize the content based upon relevancy would enhance the user's ability to follow tweets of interest to the user.